


Risen

by agoldenblackbird (mass_hipgnosis)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Some Dissociative Behaviors, thoroughly Jossed so-called 'facts'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/agoldenblackbird
Summary: An alternate S6, where Buffy really was in a hell dimension.  Goes AU at Bargaining Part II.





	

* * *

"You'll be safe here, Niblet," Spike assured her, opening the door to the Magic Box, where the others were already congregated. "You lot stay here where it's safe," he ordered them. "Glinda, you and Red need to put up some protection wards until I get this taken care of." 

"No, Spike, we can help!" Willow protested. 

"No offense, Red, but I don't need to be looking out for my own neck and yours too. You want to help? Stay here and look after the Bit." 

He was too involved in the fight, at first, to realize that it couldn't be the Bot, not in the clothes the Slayer had been buried in. It wasn't until the demons were dead, the fires still burning, that he smelled her, hot and sweet on the scorched night air. She looked through him, her head tilted slightly as though she knew he should be familiar but couldn't quite place him. "Buffy?" he breathed. 

"Is this hell?" she asked, soft, despondent. As though it didn't matter. 

"No, luv," he assured her, moving slowly, as though approaching a skittish doe, the part of his mind that wasn't stuck at _what the fuck whatthefuckwhattheFUCK!_ focused on getting near enough to touch, to make sure she was real. "Just another Tuesday night on the Hellmouth, and it's done now." 

"I know you," she said, big-eyed and solemn. 

"Yes, that's right, pet," he agreed, daring to reach out one hand, rest it gently on her shoulder. She tilted her head, rested her cheek on the back of his hand, just looking at him. Waiting. "It's your Spike." 

"Spike," she repeated obediently, with no sign of recognition. "Can I rest, now?" 

"Yes, luv." He eased closer, careful, careful, go slow, mustn't frighten her. "Rest now, I'll keep you safe." 

It took long moments of inching nearer before he could ease one arm around her, and long minutes after that before she relaxed, leaned into his body. "You're cold." 

"Yeah." 

"Mmm. No more burning," she murmured, daring to tuck her face against his throat. " 'S nice." 

He just stood there for minutes or days, arms around her, breathing in her scent and trying not to cry. "I'll keep you safe, kitten," he vowed, barely a whisper, didn't want to startle the girl. "I'm going to pick you up now, all right?" he warned her. "Take you home, where it's cool and quiet and safe." 

"Don't leave me," she murmured. 

"Never again." 

She stiffened when he scooped her up into his arms, as though braced for pain. He waited for her to go limp again before he took his first step, and carried his girl home. 

Once he got her inside, set her down, she wandered through the living room, touching everything, the chairs and walls and pictures, as though none of it was real unless she could touch it. Every time he tried to leave her long enough to call the others, she made a wordless noise of distress and clung. Finally he gave in to the inevitable, and took her upstairs to get her cleaned up. 

There was nothing sexual about it, as though he was bathing a child. She still wasn't quite there with him as he dressed her like a doll and got out the first aid kit to treat the wounds on her hands, coaxed her to take slow sips of cool water until her lips were no longer dry and cracked. It seemed hours passed before he eased her onto the couch, and she curled up on her side, head resting on his thigh while he gently stroked her hair, and finally, finally, she drifted into a fitful sleep and he could call the others. 

"Come back to the house, now. It's Buffy. She's back." 

* * *

It was too rough and loud and bright, too much, strangers pulling at her as though to rip her apart, crying, "Buffy! Buffy, you're back!" She flinched away from them, into the cool undemanding curve of her savior's embrace, clinging to him, needing him to make it go away, for everything to be dim and quiet and safe again. 

He barked at them like a hellhound guarding its' master; _Get back! Give her room, shut the hell up, she's been through enough, can't you see that!_

"What happened to her hands?" demanded the girl she should know, the one with wide ice-blue eyes. 

"That depends on what you did," the safe-man growled, arms folding about her like wings. He smelled like cured animal skins and fresh earth, cool breath on the nape of her neck. 

"I did a spell!" said the loud red one. "We all did, a resurrection, we brought her back! But we thought it didn't work!" 

"You brought her back, all right!" he snarled, and she didn't know what the words meant but the tone was clear. _Mine, get back, no touching she's mine!_ "Right back into her coffin, and she had to claw her way out of it!" 

She keened in fright and huddled against him, sure if she could just get close enough, she would melt right into that soothing cool strength and nothing could hurt her ever again. "No, no more, please..." she begged, even though begging wouldn't make it stop. Begging only made it worse. 

But begging _did_ make it stop. They all went away, except for the safe-man and the ice-eyed one, and the ice-eyed one stayed quiet. "Shh, luv, you're safe now." 

_Safe._ She remembered safe, fragments of a dream where everything was quiet and dark and there was no pain. And then he took her somewhere, with a soft place to lie down, and it was cool and quiet and he was there, curled around her and quiet too, and this was safe, she remembered now, and she could rest, he had told her she could rest. 

So the girl slept. 

* * *

The first few weeks were heaven and hell for Spike. Buffy cried, slow silent tears, if he went out of her sight, even just to another room. It was only when he had his arms around her that she stopped trembling. She screamed in her sleep, and the few words she spoke were disjointed. She didn't seem to know who any of them were, not even him, although his name became her talisman. _Spike, Spike, Spike,_ over and over again until he was as close as she needed him, and then she would quiet. She flinched from the others and barely tolerated Dawn. 

He was as gentle with her as he knew how to be, infinitely grateful for a century of caring for Drusilla, for the patience he had cultivated for his dark mistress that allowed him to be what Buffy needed. Spike could feel the others' resentment and didn't care. Buffy had been through hell-literally-and he would do whatever it took to give her peace. 

She came back to him by degrees. 

One morning, he dressed her in a pink button up, and she kept taking it off until he chose another shirt. A few days after that, she stopped eating her cereal at breakfast, waiting patiently until he served her something she liked. The day she said "Dawnie, Dawnie," with real distress, really at home behind her eyes, the three of them clung together and sobbed. 

She still wouldn't let him sleep in a separate bed, and he didn't really mind. Holding her close, knowing that she was really there, back after so many months of mourning, was the only way he could rest. The first time she let Tara embrace her without struggling to get away; Tara first, after Dawn, because she watched carefully, saw how to be slow and quiet and gentle and give Buffy the space and the peace she needed. 

And then Giles, and then Anya. One day just before Christmas, only a few weeks after she started letting him go patrolling on his own (because she still fought like a hurricane, exorcising the demons of her dreams with blades and blood), she finally let Xander and Willow back in, cried and thanked them for pulling her out of hell. 

He knew she didn't remember everything. Centuries of torment had stolen her past, made a new creature of his Slayer, and he didn't think she would ever have it all back, watching the others, puzzled and waiting for the punchline, as they told stories she should have known. 

Months turned into years, and she was never the girl he'd fallen in love with. But she was still his girl, and he still loved her, and that was enough for both of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in 2009 at Elysian Fields. One-shot, complete.


End file.
